


not a momentary sensation but a state of mind

by Ink



Category: Tales of Legendia
Genre: Other, Physical Abuse, Post-Canon, Sexual Abuse, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:18:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1224292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink/pseuds/Ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers kneeling on the floor of the throne room in Mirage Palace, the worn and worn-down grooves of stone biting into his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not a momentary sensation but a state of mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneiromantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneiromantic/gifts).



He remembers kneeling on the floor of the throne room in Mirage Palace, the worn and worn-down grooves of stone biting into his skin.

He remembers the strangling silence of the room; the guards keeping vigil at the entrance with perfect stillness, all the light long snuffed out of their eyes; the condemned girl draped across the the throne of the room like a doll; the empty space in between. He remembers blood and the sound of buzzing in his ears.

Solon breaks the silence; the dull thud of a boot and the sharp crack of bone; the rounded point of a toe at his back; he is not here he is not  _here_  he is not here even if there is copper in his mouth, even if the floor has edges; Solon kicks him again and again and he tastes dust and gravel and no, he thinks, please, he thinks, he cannot get up, he must get up,  _get up,_  Solon is saying and he doesn’t move, he can’t, please, he is not a body that can move, please

He remembers that he chose to kneel because he could not bring himself to stand; his ribs were a thousand points of glass and he thought that (stand, stand) if he stood (please don’t) it would be that much farther to fall when Solon hit him again (no, no)—

(He will remember. Later he will remember that he traded away his voice for the promise of less pain, the way he traded away his life for the promise of being loved.

Once, he must have been a person.)

Solon curls long fingers around the side of his neck, holding him aloft. Solon holds a thumb under his chin, biting in against the front of his throat: the impression of airlessness, a threat. The threat is not necessary.

He remembers the brackish taste of Solon, the tip of his tongue against the slit of his cock, up and down, back and forth, sucking, Solon guiding his head. He remembers closing his eyes and breathing through his nose, and he remembers obedience.

When he opens his eyes, Shirley is staring back at him, stock-still, frozen. She is upright and awake, her hands folded in her lap. He doesn’t move, doesn’t think of moving. He lets Solon spatter come across his nose and mouth.

In the moment, he can only summon up a kind of dull dismay, filtered through three layers of  _do not think_ , at her seeing. Later, he will picture her clear eyes meeting his, her thin and pursed mouth, and think she is judging him insufficient.

 

*

 

 _Your heart is very weak,_ she tells him.

 

*

 

It happens as spontaneously as anything involving him and people: knocking at Senel’s to discuss the recent avalanche at Fallingwater; Norma on the floor, hiding from the wrath of the innkeeper; Moses, drawn in by the lure of baked goods. Shirley popping in for a visit, then dashing out just as quickly with an, “Oh, oh, I’ll go get C!”

Senel looks bemused. Norma looks thoughtful. “Let’s not bring Teach, though. I mean, can you say fun-killer?”

He refuses his share of the (surprisingly decent) wine that Moses has scavenged from god-knows-where, making Norma roll her eyes—“I guess Teach isn’t the  _only_ fun-killer around here”—but lets Shirley braid his hair. They all still leave him edgy, slightly uncomfortable, but he recognizes that as inevitable and unavoidable. Besides, Senel’s house is warm.

Norma regales them with tales from her days at the Academy; Senel chimes in occasionally with his own stories about sea training. Shirley, slightly tipsy and giggling herself to hiccups, lets slip far more about Ferines-Orerines diplomacy than is probably acceptable. He lets them unwind him gradually over the course of the evening, until Moses is holding forth about a recent trip they’d been forced to work together on, an investigation of a rogue beast tamer up in the mountains, and he finds himself joining in.

"—and we get to her hideout without anyone hearin’, right, so far so good. Only Jay here didn’t want to tell me about his little  _thing_  with snakes—”

"—I do not have a thing with snakes, it was venomous and it  _landed on my arm_ —”

"—his thing with snakes, right, an’ he screams loud enough you could probably hear it down here in Werites Beacon—"

"—not to mention that when you saw the cobra around her neck  _you_  were the one screaming—”

"The point is," Moses continues, as smugly as if Jay hadn’t spoken, "he was scared shitless. Completely and totally petrified."

"I was not!" he bursts out, and promptly goes red to the tips of his ears. Norma laughs. He clears his throat. "I keep telling you—"

But he doesn’t get to finish that sentence, because the next thing Moses does is yawn expansively and say, “‘Course you were. I ain’t seen you that terrified since we took down the ninja.”

He stops.

"Jay," Senel says quietly, maybe to comfort, maybe to remind him that Moses is drunk and has even less of a filter than he does sober, but Jay doesn’t wait to see which it is, he leans forward and hisses, " _I wasn’t scared,_ " right in Moses’ wine-breath face. It hurts his throat.

Moses does not appear to notice. “Thought you were gonna pee your pants,” he finishes, still looking smugly unconcerned—and then he doesn’t, because that is when Jay hauls back and punches him in the kidney.

It takes several seconds for it to sink in that this is a level of violence not generally acceptable under the banner of “friends roughhousing.”

He stands up, jerkily, somewhere between four pairs of identical horrified eyes alighting on him and Moses ceasing to scream. “If you’ll excuse me,” he says. “I think I have better things to do with my time than listen to a bunch of idiots congratulate themselves on their brainless exploits.”

(Moses comes around the next day to offer a seemingly genuine apology, albeit one that includes a muttered, “but it’d be easier if you’d just  _tell_  me when I’m outta line, and not be such an ass about everythin’—” when he thinks Jay can’t hear him. So does Senel, minus the asides. He accepts both in tones clipped enough to make them think he still holds it against them.

He never really did, though; he is only angry at himself, for saying something just because he desperately wants it to be true.)

 

*

 

There is a single problem with being the savior of a world, which is: that one moment, point of light, when the hopes of an entire people flow through you and you call down that absolute power; that moment when you take it into your body.

When you have felt absolute power, you know that nothing is hopeless.

When you know that nothing is hopeless, you know you have no reason at all to fail.

 

*

 

"I just felt weak," he manages, because the circle of hovering people above him feels like a constriction. "Just for a moment."

He is bleeding, inside; he can feel it. His knuckles scrape against the dirt. His legs are crumpled under him, and he can’t—his mind stutters—he can’t seem to remember how to move them. But he can’t stand the way they look at him, either.

_Get up._

_Get up._


End file.
